Tag Archives: ANF

While it’s easy to understand the “one – two” punch, such as memorialized in Tennessee Ernie Ford’s song “Sixteen Tons,” it’s less easy to understand what has happened when a gift is so suddenly snatched away.

After not having attended the previous year’s Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank hosted soiree in Jackson Hole, this year Janet Yellen was there.

She was scheduled to speak on Friday morning and the market seemed to be biding its time all through the week hoping that Friday would bring some ultimate clarity.

Most expected that she would strike a more hawkish tone, but would do so in a way as to offer some comfort, rather than to instill fear, but instead of demonstrating that anticipation by buying stocks earlier in the week, traders needed the news and not the rumor.

The week was shaping up like another in a string of weeks with little to no net movement. Despite the usual series of economic reports and despite having gone through another earnings season, there was little to send markets anywhere.

Most recently, the only thing that has had any kind of an impact has been the return of the association between oil prices and the stock market and we all know that the current association can’t be one that’s sustainable.

That was with a parachute and I only did so after suspending all of the logical and rational thoughts that I possessed.

Sometimes you do very uncharacteristic things when you want to impress someone for some other kind of excitement.

No other level of excitement could ever be high enough to get me to further suspend logic to engage in a free fall, though.

I don’t care how exhilarating it might be, staying alive seems more exhilarating to me.

Some free falls don’t require your consent, though and unless you’ve positioned yourself short in advance of the free fall, it’s definitely not an exhilarating process.

The past week was one in which oil wasn’t the prevailing theme even as it had its own large moves.

Instead, it was the free fall of retail, led by Macy’s (M) and Nordstrom (JWN), arguably among the best of the major national retailers, that characterized the stock market.

Of course, Macy’s and then Nordstrom took most every other retailer down with them and were able to drag along many others.

That kind of free fall, though, leaves open the question of exactly where the floor happens to be.

On a positive note, hitting the floor after a market free fall is probably a lot better than hitting the floor following a recreational free fall and you do get the chance to play the game a bit longer.

There probably aren’t too many people willing to admit they remember The Osmond’s song “(Just Like A) Yo-Yo.”

The really cool people would look at you with some disdain, as the only thing that could have possibly made the yo-yo tolerable to mention in any conversation was if it was somehow in connection to the song of that title by “The Kinks.”

With her dovish words just the prior week, Janet Yellen set off another round of market ups and downs that have taken us nowhere, other than to wonder who or what we should believe and then how to behave in response.

That’s been the case all through 2016, as another week of ups and downs have left the S&P 500 just 0.2% higher year to date. Of course, that’s within a 17 month context in which the S&P 500 has had no net movement, but has certainly had lots of ups and lots of downs.

Reminds me of something.

For those that do recall happier times with a yo-yo in hand, you may recall “the sleeper.”

“The Sleeper” was deceiving.

There was lots of energy involved in the phenomenon, but not so obviously apparent, unlike the clear ups and downs of the standard yo-yo move.